


a is to apple as b is to screwing up your dipththongs

by inverse



Category: 2PM
Genre: Gen, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-24
Updated: 2011-06-24
Packaged: 2017-10-31 12:10:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/343902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inverse/pseuds/inverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>no one who speaks english fluently really cares about past participles or whatever those things are they teach in english textbooks, okay?</p>
            </blockquote>





	a is to apple as b is to screwing up your dipththongs

**Author's Note:**

> written for [biases](http://biases.livejournal.com/) for [help_japan](http://help-japan.livejournal.com/).

As an average student in high school Wooyoung was most discontent with how English was taught twice a week, two hours each time, how it was part of their compulsory core curriculum (the world is shrinking; as active citizens of the global movement we have to adapt to changes in economic conditions etc. etc.), and how it was the only subject capable of pulling down the average grade on his report card from his usual B+ to a B-. This is why he has never been an A student, because on the rare occasion that he managed to achieve such a feat, his grade in English would naturally render all his efforts futile and tar his report card with a ugly C, right smack in the middle. As typical Asian parents, his father and mother were most displeased with how he never managed to do well in the subject instead of focusing on how well he did for his others. They were resigned to it, as if it were some kind of genetic defect.

Mathematics was his friend, History and Science his allies, and English was the enemy banging on the castle doors and threatening to shoot down his defences with a Gatling gun. It was the Sauron to his Frodo. The Voldemort to his Harry Potter. English, Schminglish. Which was why he was very pleased when he finally graduated from high school, because he would no longer have to stand around in class reciting passages from textbooks that looked like they were designed for five-year-olds, colourful characters and speech bubbles and all, mispronouncing every single word and pissing off his English teacher, that unpleasant middle-aged fellow.

Until, of course, he was put into a band that had three and a half American members out of seven (Junsu being that honorary half a member), and speaking English was cool and hip and earned you throes of fans if you engaged in stormy English conversations on national television. Wooyoung reasoned that it was sheer luck that ninety percent of Korea couldn’t speak fluent English and therefore fell into a tizzy whenever Jaebum did his best Ne-yo impression or when Nichkhun charmed the pants off women aged five to seventy-five with his Californian accent.

Being the intelligent creature that he was, Wooyoung focused on speaking English as badly as he could. That earned you about the same amount of attention from the public with half as much work.

 

 

Wooyoung’s First Real English Challenge, undisturbed by extraneous considerations such as grades and report cards, came while he was filming Dream High, which, ironically, had more to do with the standard of his English than the standard of his acting. By December it had gotten to the point where Wooyoung was saying things like, “Is it my turn already?” in his sleep, which led to a serious and embarrassing misunderstanding when he had rolled across his own futon in the living room to envelope Chansung in a tight and warm embrace while spewing said phrase repeatedly. In the middle of the night. While still asleep.

“Wooyoung-ah,” Chansung said off-handedly the next morning, traipsing back to his bedroom with pillow and blanket in hand, “if you really wanted someone to hug so badly, you could have just said so.”

“You wanna hug somebody?” Junsu chipped in. “I’m always here for you, y’know.”

“No thanks,” Wooyoung replied. “You have B.O.”

Initially Wooyoung had thought that it made absolutely no sense to have him cast as the dancer who spent the last ten years in London or New York or wherever Jason came from, but on hindsight it was probably because this Jason chap was a _dancer_ , and Wooyoung got the role because he could dance and not because he could regurgitate passages from his English guidebook like a pro (which he couldn’t).

“Nah, it’ll work out,” Taecyeon remarked, reading through Wooyoung’s script. “Give it a bit of practice. I’ll help you with it on set and everything, it’ll be okay.”

“Sure, of course,” Wooyoung said as humourlessly as he could. “ _Thanks, Miss Sushi_? What kind of lines are these? Who goes to an audition dressed as a piece of sushi?”

Taecyeon laughed weakly.

“You mispronounced _thanks_ ,” he said.

 

 

“You’re doing really well,” Nichkhun beamed at Wooyoung like a ray of warm morning sunshine after listening to Wooyoung deliver his lines for the next filming session (“Are you trying to teach me?”). “Amazing for a beginner.”

“That’s great,” Wooyoung said, returning the smile and trying not to remind Nichkhun that prior to filming, he’d already been trying to improve his English for about a year, so technically, he wasn’t a beginner. “Maybe that’s why Taecyeon-hyung told me my accent was complete crap last night.”

“Did he really?” Nichkhun frowned. “That’s really mean of him.”

“Okay, so maybe he was joking,” Wooyoung replied.

Or only half-joking. They were on the way back to the dorm after another full day of filming, NGs, and getting yelled at so often by the director that by dinnertime three quarters of the cast had lost their appetite. It was two in the morning and Minjae-hyung was driving silently at the helm as usual.

“ _Who are you trying to teesh – teash –_ ” Wooyoung mumbled repeatedly to himself, flipping through the cue cards in his hands.

“Your accent is way off,” Taecyeon said from his left. He was probably half-asleep (eyes shut, arms folded) and spouting something he wasn’t aware he was, so the comment was also probably heartfelt, which made it about three times worse than if he’d said it while fully conscious and fooling around like a jerkass.

“Okay, Mr. Boston,” Wooyoung said sourly. Minjae-hyung turned on the radio. The station was playing some Seo Taiji song, the title of which Wooyoung couldn’t remember.

Wooyoung supposed it was all payback for the time Taecyeon tried to learn satoori for his role in Cinderella’s Sister but was still complete shit at it anyway (at least for the first few weeks); Junsu was the one who sat down with him during coffee breaks to teach him stock phrases so he could learn how to differentiate between all five thousand tones of the dialect while Wooyoung sat around saying useless things like “That’s not the way to say it if you’re using the Busan dialect, though. There’s a difference.” If Taecyeon ever got annoyed it didn’t show. Of course, Wooyoung has never been a fantastic teacher, so mostly he let Junsu do the work even though Taecyeon only said about a million times on ten different radio shows how he had worked very hard to learn the dialect from the two of them and how the two of them really taught him a lot. Come to think of it, it was almost kind of like a good cop, bad cop kind of routine, and Wooyoung had been the very bad cop, who mostly told Taecyeon that his satoori was rubbish, were you even really born in Busan?

“Do you want me to go talk to him?” Nichkhun asked, the very picture of motherly concern.

“Uh, no, it’s okay,” Wooyoung told him. “How do you pronounce this word again?”

 

 

“You gotta stick your tongue in between your teeth and kind of like, hiss,” Taecyeon said, gesturing madly with both hands, even though teaching someone how to speak in English had absolutely nothing to do with mad hand gestures.

“Thhhh,” Wooyoung attempted.

“Yeah, kind of like that,” Taecyeon continued, still gesturing madly. Wooyoung was starting to think he had one too many espressos that morning to compensate for sleeping at two and waking up at four again. “Hang on, give me your script, I have to translate that bit for you so you know what it means –”

“Do you guys need some time to yourselves,” the stylist said drily, delicately threading her fingers through Wooyoung’s fringe.

“I … don’t think we do?” Wooyoung told her, handing Taecyeon his script.

“Great,” the stylist sighed. “Taecyeon-sshi, would you mind taking the next seat so I can reach the hairdryer? Thanks.”

Lunchtime was mostly spent switching between watching Taecyeon desperately try not to plant his face in his bowl of rice, and watching Suzy and Soohyun rehearse their lines for the next scene. They weren’t doing too badly, compared to Taecyeon’s attempts at staying awake by staring fixedly at the wall opposite him.

“You should take a nap,” Wooyoung told him.

“Shush, I’m getting into character,” Taecyeon muttered. “Gotta get all silent and morose.”

“Yeah, liar,” Wooyoung replied, getting up. “Your eyes are getting all bloodshot.”

He was about to head to the restroom when he spotted the PD walking his way.

“Wooyoung,” the PD said, barely pausing to look at him, “the guys from the magazine are here to interview you. Dressing room on the third floor, you know what to do.”

The first, and only, question they asked him, predictably, was how he prepared for his role as an American exchange student. It was one of those interviews where details about the show were to be featured over a two-page spread, and Wooyoung could see his segment stuffed in the bottom right corner of the page with an accompanying thumbnail of himself, not exceeding four square centimetres or something.

“Uh,” he began as the reporter shoved a voice recorder under his nose, “well, of course hard work is key. I think everyone knows that English isn’t my strong suit, so I had to work really hard at it. At the beginning I really doubted whether I was going to do a good job or not, but it seems like the viewers have had a positive response to my acting, so I’m going to make sure I keep it up. It feels good when the members compliment me for my pronunciation too, so that really encourages me. English teachers? Khun-hyung helps me a lot with my pronunciation, but these days Taecyeon-hyung has been helping me a lot too, translating lines and everything. We work a lot together on set. He’s very earnest about this English thing.”

 

 

They were gathered in the living room on Tuesday night to watch the broadcast of episode seven, with Nichkhun barely making it back just in time after a CF filming. Dinner was apparently not filling enough for any of them that evening (a common occurrence in the household), so they cooked up a huge pot of ramyun and got a couple of packs of beers out the fridge to wash all those carbs down.

Somewhere around the fifteen-minute mark Jason appeared on screen, and Wooyoung felt an impending sense of dread as he watched himself open his mouth and deliver a couple of lines to Suzy. In barely comprehensible English. He wondered if he should feel proud of himself (for spewing out lines that he didn’t quite understand) or mortified (that it took fifteen takes and approximately forty-five minutes to film this minute-long scene without him flubbing most of it, and yet he still managed to stumble over the word ‘problem’).

“Wow,” Junho murmured, clapping Wooyoung on the back. “Excellent. Impressive.”

“I hope you aren’t humouring me,” Wooyoung responded.

“I meant it,” Junho shot back. “What makes you think so?”

“Well,” Wooyoung said.

Seated only a couple of feet away, Nichkhun, of all people, was grimacing – as much as he could grimace with his mouth stuffed full of noodles anyway – Junsu was choking none too conspicuously on his beer (served him right for taking such a big gulp in the first place anyway, Wooyoung felt) and Chansung was watching the rest of the scene agape, his expression more confused than chagrined.

 _You’re a shitty English teacher,_ Wooyoung thought as hard as he could in Taecyeon’s direction. And because he was psychic, Taecyeon turned around just in time to flash him a grim, gummy smile, his hand curled defensively around his chopsticks.

“Hey, Eunjung-sshi’s hot,” Junsu said a couple of seconds later, having recovered from his choking episode.

“Wanna get introduced?” Taecyeon asked him, turning his attention back to the television.

 

 

“Hey, at least they didn’t edit out any more lines like before,” Taecyeon said later as he cleared the plates at the end of the episode with Junho’s help.

“That’s all thanks to you, I’m sure,” Wooyoung said, attacking the coffee table with a wet dishcloth.

“Don’t mention it,” Taecyeon grinned, hauling the plates off to the kitchen. “Excellent teachers can only produce good students, right?”

“Save it, smug snake,” Wooyoung muttered under his breath.

“I heard that,” Junho said.


End file.
